appointments were shapely and in order. She was clearly a British man-
of-war, as shown in her trim-dressed sailors, her good handful of
marines; but her second and third lieutenants seemed little like
Englishmen. There was gun-drill and cutlass-drill every day, and, what
was also singular, there was boat-drill twice a day, so that the crew of
this man-of-war, as they saw Golden Gate ahead of them, were perhaps more
expert at boat-drill than any that sailed. They could lower and raise a
boat with a wonderful expertness in a bad sea, and they rowed with clock-
like precision and machine-like force.

Their general discipline did credit to the British Navy. But they were
not given to understand that by their Commander, Captain Shewell, who had
an eye like a spot of steel and a tongue like aloes or honey as the mood
was on him. It was clear that he took his position seriously, for he was
as rigid and exact in etiquette as an admiral of the old school, and his
eye was as keen for his officers as for his men; and that might have
seemed strange too, if one had seen him two years before commanding a
schooner with a roving commission in the South Seas. Then he was more
genial of eye and less professional of face. Here he could never be
mistaken for anything else than the commander of a man-of-war--it was in
his legs, in the shoulder he set to the wind, in the tone of his orders,
in his austere urbanity to his officers. Yet there was something else in
his eye, in his face, which all this professionalism could not hide, even
when he was most professional--some elusive, subterranean force or
purpose.

This was most noticeable when he was shut away from the others in his
cabin. Then his whole body seemed to change. The eye became softer, and
yet full of a sort of genial devilry, the body had a careless alertness
and elasticity, the whole man had the athletic grace of a wild animal,